It was _very_ cold.
Several others beside the raven were thinking so--the three chickens who lived in a queer little house in one corner of the yard thought so, and huddled the closer together, as they settled themselves for the night.
For though it was only half-past three in the afternoon, they thought it was no use sitting up any longer on such a make-believe of a day, when not the least little ray of sunshine had succeeded in creeping through the leaden-grey sky.

And the tortoise _would_ have thought so too if he could, but he was too sleepy to think at all, as he "cruddled" himself into his shell in the corner of the laurel hedge, and dreamt of the nice hot days that were past.
And upstairs, inside the old house, somebody else was thinking so too--a little somebody who seemed to be doing her best to make herself, particularly her nose, colder still, for she was pressing it hard on to the icy window-pane and staring out on to the deserted, snow-covered garden, and thinking how cold it was, and wishing it was summer time again, and fancying how it would feel to be a raven like old "Dudu," all at once, in the mixed-up, dancing-about way that "thinking" was generally done in the funny little brain of Mademoiselle Jeanne.
Inside the room it was getting dark, and the white snow outside seemed to make it darker.
"Mademoiselle Jeanne," said a voice belonging to a servant who just then opened the door; "Mademoiselle Jeanne, what are you doing at the window?
You will catch cold." Jeanne gave a little start when she heard herself spoken to.

She had been all alone in the room for some time, with not a sound about her.
She turned slowly from the window and came near the fire.
"If I did catch cold, it would not be bad," she said.

"I would stay in bed, and you, Marcelline, would make me nice things to eat, and nobody would say, 'Don't do that, Mademoiselle.' It would be charming." Marcelline was Jeanne's old nurse, and she had been her mother's nurse too.

She was really rather old, how old nobody seemed exactly to know, but Jeanne thought her _very_ old, and asked her once if she had not been her grandmother's nurse too.